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The purple logo that looked brown on store shelves
I designed a logo for a local coffee shop in Austin using a deep plum purple. When the owner printed it on their storefront sign and takeout cups, it came out looking muddy brown. The issue was I picked the color on my bright monitor without checking how it looked on a standard matte surface. I ended up going back and adjusting the saturation way up, and now I always test my colors on actual print samples before finalizing.
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shanenguyen9d ago
and that's exactly why I always say the color you see on screen is a straight up liar. I had a similar thing happen with a deep teal for my brother's food truck wrap, looked gorgeous on my laptop and then came back looking like swamp water. The issue is bright RGB screens just pump out so much more light than matte paper or vinyl can reflect back (you know, subtractive vs additive color). Now I do the same thing, I'll print a sample on the actual material I'm using and hold it in the room where it's gonna live before I give the final signoff. It's annoying extra work but beats the panic of getting that first batch of cups back looking like muddy garbage.
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